Sue Dymoke, Becky Cullen and Jonathan Taylor, a Shoestring Press/Poetry Business reading for National Poetry Day
14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 2DH
Jonathan will be reading from his latest collection, Cassandra Complex, a collection of poems, found poems, found translations, mis-translations, prophecies, pseudo-prophecies, apocalyptic visions and moments of retroactive clairvoyance.
His previous books include the novel Melissa (Salt), the memoir Take Me Home (Granta), and an earlier poetry collection, Musicolepsy (Shoestring Press). He has been a popular reader at the bookshop, States of Independence and, this summer, at Lowdham Book Festival.
What They Left Behind is Sue Dymoke’s third Shoestring Press collection after Moon at the Park and Ride and The New Girls – new and selected poems. She is a Reader in Education at the University of Leicester where she researches and teaches aspects of poetry pedagogy. She has given writing workshops and keynote lectures at universities in Japan, New Zealand and Europe as well as in primary schools, secondary schools and writers’ groups. She is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Other honours include the Terry Furlong Research Award from the National Association for the Teaching of English and a National Teaching Fellowship. She is the author of Drafting and Assessing Poetry (Paul Chapman); two volumes from Bloomsbury, Making Poetry Matter: international research on poetry pedagogy and Making Poetry Happen: transforming the poetry classroom, and, with Andy Croft, edited the anthology Not Just a Game: Sporting Poetry (Five Leaves).
Tonight she will be reading from her latest Shoestring collection – being launched this evening.
Becky Cullen will be reading from Majid Sits in a Tree and Sings, which is a pamphlet of contrary people waiting to whisper in your ear – mothers, children, those who want to tell a secret or explain something before it’s too late, those who don’t quite fit and those who don’t want to. Characters such as Majid, a young boy who loves his mother, encourage us to see the same things repeatedly and to see them differently each time.
This is a pamphlet of poems which shine and crackle with their own dark electricity. Finely wrought, precise and wide ranging in their themes, they carry a pleasing shiver of wildness in their hearts. – Liz Berry
Free, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming, on events@fiveleaves.co.uk